Bonnie gripped the sledgehammer a little tighter and took another swing like it was a baseball bat, smashing it into the wall separating the living room from the dining room. Demolition was way more fun than cleaning up garbage and ripping up stained carpet.
“She’s got lots of pent-up frustration,” her dad said, standing beside Sasha with his arms folded across his chest. “I can’t wait to see how long it takes her to tire out.”
Bonnie whacked the wall again. “Are you two going to just stand there watching me or are you going to get to work?”
“I could use some help over here,” Aaron called from the kitchen. “We need to take out the counters and knock down cabinets.”
Bonnie rested the sledgehammer on her shoulder. “Oh, I want to knock down cabinets.”
“You can’t stop in the middle of a job to do another one,” her dad said. “Nothing will ever get finished.”
Sasha punched a hole in the drywall underneath one of Bonnie’s, then ripped a chunk off with his bare hand. “She got it started. I can finish it.”
Bonnie and her dad exchanged a look. Sasha was a one-man wrecking machine and worth every penny that Aaron was paying him. She lugged the sledgehammer over to the kitchen, excited to break something rather than just put holes in the wall.
“Can I smash them?” she asked Aaron, winding up to take a swing.
He grabbed the sledgehammer and pulled her closer to him. “Whoa, slow down there, Rosie the Riveter. Maybe we should unscrew them from the wall.”
He smelled too good to be working construction. He was supposed to stink like sweat, not expensive cologne. Bonnie found herself momentarily intoxicated by him. It wasn’t only his scent that had her captured, but the way he gazed into her eyes made her weak in the knees. Since when did Aaron look at her like she was something other than his little sister’s friend? He was like family. She shouldn’t be feeling things when he was near.
Pretending she was completely unfazed, she pulled away. “Well, that’s no fun. I’m going to go back to knocking down walls, then.”
He was quick to stop her from going. “Fine, you can sledgehammer a couple, but let’s start with the counters.”
Bonnie needed to shake off whatever just happened between them in those few short seconds and get back to taking out a few weeks of frustration on this house. She could only wrestle with one emotion at a time.
Aaron showed her how to hit the overhang from underneath it rather than from above. As hard as she tried, she wasn’t strong enough to pop it off. After half a dozen attempts, her forearms were burning.
“Maybe we should take turns. That way we won’t tire out,” he suggested, kindly not making her feel like a failure by simply taking over.
She handed over the sledgehammer. In two hits, he detached the counter from the cabinets. “You loosened it up for me.”
He was too nice. Bonnie snatched the sledgehammer away. She wasn’t cut out for removing the counters—she was better when she got the help of gravity when she swung this thing. “You are in charge of counters, and I am going to get rid of these horrible floating cabinets.”
Without missing a beat, she spun around and attempted to hit the cabinets separating the kitchen from the living room. Only instead of hitting the cabinets, the sledgehammer slipped right out of her hands and went flying right into her dad, who had come over to see what they were doing.
“Dad!”
It was a total knockout. Everyone ran over to where he went down. Blood flowed from his head like a river. Bonnie felt herself get a little woozy. She wasn’t used to seeing so much blood. Her dad opened his eyes and put his hand over his wound. It didn’t do much to stop the flow.
“This is not good,” Aaron said.
“Do we have anything for him to hold on that cut?” Sasha asked.
There was nothing in the house that was clean enough to put on an open wound. Aaron didn’t hesitate. He lifted his shirt off his head and folded it up so her dad could use it to stop the bleeding. A shirtless Aaron would have been the distraction of a lifetime if Bonnie wasn’t feeling so panicked about her dad.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Bonnie said. He probably couldn’t get up off the floor. Calling 911 might have been her only option.
“I’m fine,” her dad protested, trying to sit up. “I don’t need to go to no hospital. Head wounds bleed a lot.”
Aaron and Sasha helped him to his feet. “David, you just got knocked over by the flying handle of a sledgehammer. Let me see that cut.” Bonnie’s dad pulled his hand away. The blood was still pouring out. The cut on his forehead was deep. There was no bandage that was going to hold that together successfully.
“You need stitches, Dad. It’s not good.”
Her stubborn father shook his broken head. “I just need to sit down for a minute.”
“Dad.”
“You can rest for a minute in my car,” Aaron said. Bonnie was about to start a fight when he added, “But I’ll be driving you to the hospital while you do it.”
Her dad started to protest when he lost his balance. Sasha scooped him as though he were a child. “Don’t worry, Dave. I’ll keep tearing stuff down while you guys are gone,” he said. “We won’t get too behind. I promise.”
Bonnie was so grateful for these two men who had her father’s back. She relaxed enough to appreciate the way Aaron looked from behind without his shirt on. In one day, she’d almost killed her dad and was suddenly both hot and bothered whenever Aaron was near. Things were so confusing, it was like she had been the one hit on the head.
NOT ONLY WOULD she mention how close Blue Springs Hospital was to the house
